Who Rules Your Roost?

I don’t always read my weekly copy of the New Yorker from cover to cover. I will page through it and read the shorter features so I know which bands I won’t be going to see in a city where I don’t live. Ditto the “Tables for Two” feature, but substitute eating for listening. But I admit that I can be something of a lightweight when it comes to reading the stories whose type grays pages and pages of the magazine. In fact, the subscription isn’t even in my name – technically my subscription is in our dog’s name, but that’s a story for another day.

But a books feature in the July 2 edition with the headline “Spoiled Rotten: Why do kids rule the roost?” caught my eye. Elizabeth Kolbert’s essay is a survey of a few books on the topic that could loosely be called “kids today and their inept parents – how did it get this bad?” Several tall tales within the essay describe parents who ask (and ask and ask and ask) their children to do simple things, and children who either ignore the requests or are too lazy and/or lacking in skill to do as told. Most of the children are sassy and sarcastic in their replies to their elders.

The anecdotes include the tale of an 8-year-old who seems incapable of following through on his dad’s request that he go take a bath (that one ends with the boy playing a video game rather than scrubbing as instructed). There’s a kid who can’t put on his shoes so the family can leave the house because the shoes are already tied. Another girl the same age claims she can’t eat because no one gave her silverware, even though she knows where the silverware drawer is. Then by contrast, there are stories of children the same age living in the Peruvian Amazon who can do – and actually do do – everything their parents do. Cook, clean, you name it, they do it.

Researchers featured in the story rightly ask what gives with American kids and their parents these days?  The experts quoted have their theories as to why kids are behaving the way they are and why parents are dropping the ball left and right by doing everything for their kids rather than having the patience to wait out their kids and teach them valuable life lessons. You can go to the New Yorker story linked above to find out what they think (it’s less than four pages so if I have time, you do, too).

Personally, I think I have a handle on why this kind of stuff happens in my house, and it could be a rather practical explanation for this seemingly widespread complaint: I work full-time, leaving the house at 7:30 a.m. and not returning home until 6 p.m. or later, so there aren’t enough hours in the day to wait for my children to do what I ask. Because my kids are 4 and 2, I don’t feel like they are lost causes on this front, thankfully. But as it stands, directions to march upstairs and get ready for a bath definitely go unheeded. Pleas to pick up toys before bed may get them to start picking up, but usually they get distracted by the toys they find along the way, leaving more for my husband and me to pick up after they go to bed.

Does that make me a wimpy parent? Do parents today need to be tougher and expect more from their children? Share your thoughts in the comments or let me know via Twitter @AmyLunday.